Science & Sensibility

by Wendy Gordon, CPM, LM, MPH, MANA Division of Research, Assistant Professor, Bastyr University Dept of Midwifery

Today, occasional contributor, midwife and researcher Wendy Gordon, LM, CPM, MPH, Midwives Alliance Division of Research, shares some insights into some of the fascinating discussions that took place at last week’s Institute of Medicine’s workshop focusing on birth place settings.  From all reports from the many people in attendance, this workshop will hopefully help move the research and discussion on the topic of birth place settings forward and create opportunities for more families to chose to birth where they feel most comfortable and safe. – Sharon Muza, Community Manager, Science & Sensibility

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Last week marked an historic opportunity for maternity care providers to regroup and become inspired to move our professions forward together in all birth settings.  The two-day event, hosted by the prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM) and sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, focused on “Research Issues in the Assessment of Birth Settings” and brought together the greatest minds in research and practice in all three birth settings: home, birth center and hospital.  Issues of tremendous importance to consumers, providers and researchers in the birth community were discussed in a collegial and inspiring manner… marred only by one presentation that stirred a bit of controversy.

Historic Workshop Can Positively Impact Future Research 

Similar to the first IOM conference on this topic over 30 years ago, the intent of last week’s gathering was to discuss the research regarding the effect of place of birth on maternal and infant outcomes. Invited speakers included researchers, public health professionals, midwives, nurses, pediatricians and obstetricians.  In structured mini-sessions, panelists shared their expertise on the following topics:

• the historical and current picture of who is giving birth in the different settings;
• definitions of “low-risk” versus “high-risk”;
•  what the best research says about safety in various settings; 
• education, regulation and management of different types of providers;
•  methods of collection and use of data regarding maternity care and birth in various settings; 
•  cost and value differences between settings and reimbursement issues; and 
• the rich and varied perspectives of providers in the three childbirth settings.

Members of the audience were just as impressive as the panelists themselves when, at the end of each panel, the microphone was opened and significant content was added through their questions and comments.  

A lot of ground was covered over the course of the two days, and there were several takeaways that had particular impact for the midwifery community. The home birth rate in the U.S. was predicted to continue its rise with the next release of CDC data, reaching about 31,500 births nationwide in 2010. The MANA Stats web-based system was touted by attendees as the best data collection system for home birth outcomes.  Birth certificate data was shown to still have major problems in its ability to accurately capture intended place of birth and other reliability issues, despite improvements in recent years.  A Medicaid study from Washington State demonstrated vast cost savings with midwifery care and birth at home and in birth centers.  The workshop report will have tremendous potential to impact contemporary birth policy and research agendas.

Lack of Consumer Representation and Little Discussion of Health Disparities

There was no consumer representation on workshop panels, nor was there a panel addressing disparities in maternal and infant outcomes, which seems to have been a grave oversight of the organizers.  In the 30 years since the last IOM workshop on birth settings, overall infant mortality has been reduced from 11.5/1000 to 6.7/1000, but the black-white gap has actually increased. In 1982, nearly twice as many babies born to black mothers than white mothers died before their first birthday (19.6 infant deaths per 1000 births vs 10.1/1000; National Center for Health Statistics, 1986). Recent mortality figures show that disparity to be even wider (12.67/1000 vs 5.52/1000; Mathews & MacDorman, 2012).

With childbirth in home and birth center settings gaining momentum nationally and at the state level, research to support policy in this direction is more important than ever. The best research has shown for decades, and continues to show, that for women with low-risk pregnancies, birth that is planned to occur in the home and birth center settings with a skilled midwife is no more risky than birth in the hospital and results in far fewer interventions, lower cost and higher satisfaction (Vedam et al, 2012).  Hopefully, the breadth of this research can finally start to expand beyond proving that it is safe.

‘Recrudescence’ Revisited

Despite this body of literature, there are still some physicians who persist in torturing the data in an attempt to frame their personal opinions as “science.”  It was disappointing, although perhaps not surprising, to see Dr. Frank Chervenak use his time on the provider panel to do just that. The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology recently published an article authored by Dr. Chervenak regarding the “recrudescence of homebirth” (Chervenak et al, 2013), and perhaps it was the controversy stirred by that article that prompted the conference organizers to invite him to speak on this panel. The panel members included Dr. Chervenak as a hospital-based provider, Karen Pelote, CNM with the birth center provider perspective, and Brynne Potter, CPM as a homebirth provider.  Both Pelote and Potter appeared to have taken seriously the purpose of their panel representation and showcased the data on our client-centered models of care, with photos and quotes from women regarding the care they received and their experiences in the birth center and home settings.   

In stark contrast, Chervenak used his 12 minutes (out of 10) that were to be devoted to the hospital provider perspective for, instead, a rapid-fire display of “back-of-the-envelope” bar graphs attempting to show home/hospital differences in 5-minute Apgar scores using raw data drawn from birth certificates.  Since it appears that some doctors are having a hard time getting their “research” on this topic published in peer-reviewed journals, they are presenting their data in settings that do not require peer-review, such as last year’s annual conference of the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine (the study still hasn’t been published) and this IOM workshop.  Meanwhile, there are several well-designed studies published in peer-reviewed journals that show that there is no difference in 5-minute Apgar scores between home and hospital settings (Hutton et al, 2009; Janssen et al, 2009; van der Kooy et al, 2011).

That a professional invited to contribute to a high-level workshop about research would present an un-peer-reviewed thesis based on unreliable data, lacking any statistical analysis, is… well, let’s just say “puzzling.”  Exploiting the concept of “relative risk,” Chervenak sliced and diced the data in more ways than were thought possible to suggest that babies born at home were more likely to have a low 5-minute Apgar score than babies born in the hospital.

“Home Births Should Not Happen”

Chervenak’s non-reviewed data did find a higher rate of Apgar scores of “10” in the home setting versus “9” in the hospital setting. His point? Not that, clinically speaking, there is no difference between a score of 9 vs. 10 (they’re both good). Not that babies might possibly be doing better due to normal physiologic labor and undisturbed birth and that we should explore this further. Instead, he suggested – at this historic setting – that midwives lie about Apgar scores because “no one is watching.”  After a day and a half of earnest, interprofessional collegiality, Chervenak wrapped up his extended presentation with his unabashed opinion: “Home births should not happen.”

Epidemiologists in the room were quick to step to the microphone for the open discussion part of the panel, pointing out the many flaws in Chervenak’s presentation.  Marian MacDorman, Ph.D., senior statistician and researcher for the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, reminded everyone that birth certificate data is notoriously unreliable for neonatal seizures and low Apgar scores; this has been shown time and again for decades and had indeed been discussed earlier in this very workshop.  More importantly, McDorman stated that data from birth certificates cannot be used to make comparisons between settings or providers.  Her point, which deserves some elaboration here, is that there is a very important distinction between “absolute risk” and “relative risk,” and different types of data are better than others depending on what you are trying to describe. 

“When we limit access to certain birth settings because of risk, are we examining the risks of the alternative?” – Brynne Potter, CPM

Absolute vs. Relative Risk

Let’s say that a person’s odds of getting struck by lightning in a heavily populated city are one in a million, and those same odds in a rural area are five in a million. These odds are called your “absolute risk” of being struck by lightning. Another way to look at this is to say that a person’s odds of being struck by lightning are five times higher in a rural area than in a densely-populated area; this is the “relative risk” of a lightning strike in one area over another.

A common approach of anti-homebirth activists is to use the “relative risk” approach and ignore the absolute risk, because it’s much more dramatic and sensationalistic to suggest that the risk of something is “double!” or “triple!” that of something else, even though the absolute risk of those things are very low and may not even be statistically significantly different from each other.  Of course, any infant or maternal mortality is a tragedy.  But one of the key points raised at the IOM workshop was the idea that, in our efforts to identify “safety” with one indicator (mortality) or “truly low-risk” pregnancies by their absence of a particular factor (breech position, for example), we often fail to quantify all of the impacts of the various settings in ways that are meaningful to the women who experience the outcomes, such as the fact that in many areas, the only option for breech delivery is cesarean or the only way a VBAC can happen is at home, attended or not.  As Brynne Potter asked last week: when we limit access to certain birth settings because of risk, are we examining the risks of the alternative?

To return to the lightning analogy, it would be deeply disingenuous for a person to say that you shouldn’t move to a rural area simply because your risk of being struck by lightning is five times higher, without mentioning that at worst, that risk is five in a million. The ethics of this are further called into question when the person suggesting this is a trusted care provider, and is even worse when that person withholds all information about your option to move to a rural area — disregarding all of your other reasons for wanting to doing so — because they have decided that the risk of being hit by lightning there is too high for you.

Clarifying the Validity of Birth Certificate Data

Dr. MacDorman clarified how to interpret the data for anyone who might have been misled by Dr. Chervenak’s slides. She pointed out that regarding low Apgar scores, “the absolute risk is low; that’s all you can say with vital data.”  It doesn’t happen very often in any setting; most studies on homebirth around the world report the occurrence of low Apgar scores (<7) in the range of 1%, and very low scores (<4) are even rarer.  Studies have shown that the more rare an occurrence is, the less likely it is to be captured accurately on the birth certificate (Northam & Knapp, 2006).

Overall, the Midwives Alliance Division of Research (DOR) and other organizations working to improve maternity care are pleased with the near-consensus viewpoint by the majority of the disciplines represented at this workshop: that normal physiologic birth is best for mother and baby and should be the goal of all settings and practitioners.  We are looking forward to the future research inspired by this event.  We believe that there is potential for there to be more movement in the next 30 years than there was since the last IOM workshop on this topic 30 years ago, particularly because of the availability of high-quality datasets such as MANA Stats (primarily planned home births) and the American Association of Birth Centers’ Uniform Data Set (primarily planned birth center births).  As the stewards of the largest database on midwifery care and outcomes of normal physiologic birth in the home setting, the DOR encourages researchers to apply for the MANA Stats data to conduct this important research (application information at mana.org/DOR). 

References:

Chervenak FA, McCullough LB, Brent RL, Levene MI, Arabin B. 2013. Planned home birth: The professional responsibility response. AJOG 208(1):31-38.

Hutton EK, Reitsma AH, Kaufman K. 2009. Outcomes associated with planned home and planned hospital births in low-risk women attended by midwives in Ontario, Canada, 2003-2006: A retrospective cohort study. BIRTH 36(3):180-189.

Janssen PA, Saxell L, Page LA, Klein MC, Liston RM, Lee SK. 2009. Outcomes of planned home birth with registered midwife versus planned hospital birth with midwife or physician. CMAJ, doi:10.1503/cmaj.081869.

Mathews, TJ & MacDorman, M. 2012. National Vital Statistics Reports: Infant mortality statistics from the 2008 period linked birth/ infant death data set. Available online at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_05.pdf. 

National Center for Health Statistics. 1986. Vital Statistics of the United States, 1982, Vol II: Mortality, Part A. DHHS Pub. No. (PHS) 86-1122. Public Health Service: Washington. U.S. Government Printing Office.

Northam S, Knapp TR. 2006. The reliability and validity of birth certificates. J Obstet Gynecol Neonatal Nurs 35(1):3-12.

van der Kooy J, Poeran J, de Graaf JP, Birnie E, Denktas S, Steegers EAP, Bonsel GJ. 2011. Planned home compared with planned hospital births in the Netherlands: Intrapartum and early neonatal death in low-risk pregnancies. Obstet Gynecol 118:1037-46.

Vedam S, Schummers L, Stoll K, Fulton C. 2012. Home Birth: An Annotated Guide to the Literature.  Available online at http://mana.org/DOR/research-resources/.

About Wendy Gordon

 

 

Sharon Muza Guest Posts, Healthcare Reform, Home Birth, Maternal Mortality, Maternal Mortality Rate, Maternal Quality Improvement, Maternity Care, Midwifery, Newborns, Transforming Maternity Care Apgar, birth centers, birth setting, Brynne Potter, Chervenak, Frank Chervenak, guest post, homebirth, Institute of Medicine, Karen Pelote, MANA, Marian MacDorman, midwives, Wendy Gordon

By: Walker Karraa

Regular contributor Walker Karraa wraps up her interview with Jennifer Carney, who became active with The Preeclampsia Foundation and the Unexpected Project after suffering from eclampsia while pregnant with her second child.  Have you had to answer any questions in your classes or with your clients and patients after the recent episode of Downton Abbey, where one of the characters developed eclampsia?  What have you shared with your pregnant families? Part one of Walker’s interview with Jennifer Carney can be found here. – Sharon Muza, Community Manager.  

Walker: What do you see are the common myths regarding pre-eclampsia?

JC: Common myths? Oh, there are so many. A lot of people seem to think they know what causes preeclampsia and how to cure it. There’s a whole faction of advocates who buy into the work of Dr. Tom Brewer, who in the 1960′s, devised a very high protein diet for mothers based on the idea that preeclampsia is caused by malnutrition. This isn’t supported by the current research, but it gets repeated all the time. Other people argue that preeclampsia is a so-called “lifestyle” disease – caused by obesity and poor prenatal care. Obesity is a risk factor, but it is only one of many and poor prenatal care can cause the disease to go undetected, but it will not cause it to happen in the first place. There are also a lot of people who think that the delivery of the baby will end the risk to the mother – and while it’s true that the removal of the placenta is essential, preeclampsia or eclampsia can still happen up to 6 weeks after delivery. There are other myths, but it strikes me that so many of these myths are rooted in a desire to control pregnancy. If we can blame preeclampsia on one central cause or on the women who develop it themselves, then we can reassure ourselves that we won’t develop it, too. There are risk factors that can increase a woman’s chances of developing the disease, but women without any known risk factors have developed it, too.

It’s not comforting to think that no one is safe, but with knowledge of the signs and symptoms – a woman can react to it promptly and receive the care that she needs. But this will only happen if women get the information and understand that it CAN happen to them. I am blown away by the ways in which preeclampsia and other serious complications are downplayed and dismissed in pregnancy books, online and even by some medical practitioners. Preeclampsia CAN happen to you – but you can deal with it IF you know the signs and the symptoms.

Walker: Can you share with our readers what you are doing with Anne Garrett Addison at The Unexpected Project?

JC: The Unexpected Project is a documentary, website, and book project that will examine the rate of maternal deaths and near-misses in the United States. Anne Garrett Addison, who founded the Preeclampsia Foundation, and I are both classified as near-misses due to preeclampsia. With Unexpected, we want to take a look at all maternal deaths regardless of the cause – preeclampsia, amniotic fluid embolism, hemorrhage, placenta previa, placental abruption, infection, suicide, and any other causes. We also want to look at the women who survived these complications because the line between surviving and dying is in these cases, often quite thin. Every case is different and there is no one factor to blame for the maternal death rate in the US. We will look at interventions and cesarean sections, but we will also look at the lack of information available to women and the tendency of some birth activists to minimize the dangers of serious birth complications.

Current Preeclampsia/Eclampsia StatisticsMaternal mortality and morbidity are, unfortunately, a part of the pregnancy and childbirth experience for women and their families in the US and the world.  While most (99%) of maternal mortalities occur in the developing world, the 1% that occur in developed countries like the US are still of concern to maternity care providers and advocates.  Indeed, U.S. still ranks 50th in the world for its maternal mortality rate (1). More common than a maternal death, are severe short- or long-term morbidities due to obstetric complications (2).  Some estimate that unexpected complications occur in up to 15% of women who are otherwise healthy at term (2).   In particular, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, including elevated blood pressure, preeclampsia, eclampsia and HELLP syndrome are estimated to affect 12-22% of pregnant women and their babies worldwide each year. (3)  Adverse neonatal outcomes are higher for infants born to women with pregnancies complicated by hypertension.   In the U.S., upwards of 8 percent or 300,000 pregnant or postpartum women develop preeclampsia or the related condition, HELLP syndrome each year. This number is growing as more women enter pregnancy already hypertensive (cite).  Preeclampsia is still a leading cause of pregnancy-related death in the US and one of the most preventable.  Annually, approximately 300 women die and another 75,000 women experience “near misses” – severe complications and injury such as organ failure, massive blood loss, permanent disability, and premature birth or death of their babies.  Usually, the disease resolves with the birth of the baby and placenta. But, it can occur postpartum–indeed, most maternal deaths occur after delivery. Recent statistics from Christine Morton, PhD.

The trend toward “normal” or “natural” birth does not seem to allow a lot of space for our stories to be heard or to be told. This has the effect of making survivors feel marginalized – as though their experience is somehow too far outside “normal” to be a part of the overall conversation. The one constant of all of our stories is that none of us expected to become statistics. Our birth plans did not include emergency cesarean sections, seizures, ICUs, blood transfusions, strokes, hysterectomies, CPR, prematurity, PTSD, depression, or death. No one was more surprised than us. This isn’t about assigning blame – this is about finding answers, improving birth for ALL moms to come, and learning to live with the unexpected.

Walker: How did you get involved with researching for the Preeclampsia Foundation?

JC: I started out volunteering with the March of Dimes in the spring following my son’s birth. I started a walk team and raised money, hoping that I would be able to meet other moms who had been through something similar. I felt very alone in the months following his birth. I was dealing with postpartum depression (PPD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and struggling to feel normal again. I had a premature infant – which meant sleeping through the night was a problem for a long time. When I returned to work, I was greeted by a coworker who declared that she now no longer wanted to have children because of what I had gone through. This weighed heavily on me – and I felt like I was the cautionary tale, the one bad pregnancy story that everyone knows. I know I had never heard a story as bad as mine – so I felt deflated, flattened by the whole thing.

With the March of Dimes, I found moms to help me deal with the preemie part of it. As he matured and grew out of the preemie issues, I found that I still had a lot of issues to deal with regarding my own health – both physically and mentally. I decided to volunteer with the Preeclampsia Foundation after they merged with the HELLP Syndrome Society.  The Preeclampsia Foundation is much smaller than the March of Dimes, which allowed me to be much more active as a volunteer. I was able to use my writing and editing skills to work on the newsletter – and when I suggested that someone do a review of the available pregnancy literature based on how well they cover preeclampsia, I was given the opportunity to conduct that research and write the report myself. This was something I had been doing informally in bookstores for a while anyway, so it felt good to be able to look at the literature and confirm that the information really is severely lacking if not downright misleading in a large number of so-called comprehensive books. It really isn’t my fault that I missed the symptoms.

This year, I am coordinating the Orange County, California Promise Walk in Irvine as part of the foundation’s main fundraising campaign on May 18. I am hoping to bring a mental health expert from the California Maternal Mental Health Collaborative out to the walk to talk to the moms about dealing with the emotional impact of their birth experiences.  Many of these moms lost babies, delivered preemies, or suffered severe health issues of their own. Our community as a whole is at a very high risk for mental health issues, myself included.

It wasn’t until this year – 6 years after the birth of my son – that I finally sought professional help dealing with the PTSD from the very difficult birth experience. I feel that the volunteer work helped fill that spot for the past 6 years and brought me to the point where I can now process the trauma in a healthy way. I am not happy that I had eclampsia, but I am beyond grateful for all of the great people that it has indirectly brought into my life.

Closing Thoughts

To have to wait 6 years to receive the vital treatment for PTSD is a travesty. We are so thankful that Jennifer survived both the initial trauma, but endured its legacy of traumatic stress that lingers today. Unfortunately, PTSD subsequent to traumatic childbirth is growing in prevalence, and under-recognized by the majority of women’s health and maternity care providers.  I have learned a great deal from Jennifer and look forward to the work she and her colleagues will continue to do for the benefit of all women.

References

1.  WHO. Trends in maternal mortality: 1990 to 2008 estimates developed by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and The World Bank, World Health Organization 2010, Annex 1. 2010. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2010/9789241500265_eng.pdf. Last accessed:January 3, 2011.

2. Guise, J-M.  Anticipating and responding to obstetric emergencies.  Best Practice and Research Clinical Obstetrics and Gynaecology. 2007; 21 (4): 625-638

3. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Diagnosis and management of preeclampsia and eclampsia; ACOG Practice Bulletin No. 33. Obstetrics & Gynecology. 2002;99:159-167. 

 

Walker Karraa Birth Trauma, Childbirth Education, Depression, Guest Posts, Maternal Mental Health, Maternal Mortality, Maternity Care, News about Pregnancy, Postpartum Depression, Pre-eclampsia, Pre-term Birth, Pregnancy Complications, PTSD Childbirth Education, eclampsia, guest post, Jennifer Carney, March of Dimes, maternal depression, Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome, preeclampsia, Preeclampsia Foundation, PTSD, traumatic birth, Walker Karraa

The Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health has just published the results of the National Birth Center Study II. As the name suggests, this is the second time researchers have undertaken a multi-site study of U.S. birth centers to understand the process and outcomes of care in these settings. The first appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1989, and concluded that “birth centers offer a safe and acceptable alternative to hospital confinement for selected pregnant women, particularly those who have previously had children, and that such care leads to relatively few cesarean sections.”

The current study describes birth centers as a “durable model” of care because, again, outcomes were excellent. 

Here are the key findings of the National Birth Center Study II: Of more than 15,000 women eligible for birth center care when labor started, 93% had spontaneous vaginal births, and 6% had cesareans. 16% of women transferred during labor, and approximately 2.5% of mothers or newborns required transfer to the hospital after birth. Emergent transfer before or after birth was required for 1.9% of women in labor or for their newborns. Most women who transferred in labor had vaginal births. There were no maternal deaths. The intrapartum stillbirth rate was 0.47/1000, and the neonatal mortality rate was 0.40/1000 excluding anomalies.

I had an opportunity to interview one of the study authors, Cara Osborne, SD, MSN, CNM. Dr. Osborne is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas School of Nursing, a perinatal epidemiologist, and co-founder of Maternity Centers of America. I asked her what the study findings mean for women and families and what it will take to scale up the birth center model and expand access.

AR: Thanks for participating in this interview. First and foremost, what should expectant parents know about this study?

CO: The take away messages from this study for expectant parents are that birth center care is safe and minimizes the likelihood that their baby will need to be born by cesarean, and that if hospital care becomes necessary, that transfer is very unlikely (1.9%) to be an emergency.

(Rebecca Dekker, PhD, RN, APRN of Evidence Based Birth has prepared an excellent summary that appears at the American Association of Birth Centers web site with more about the study findings and their implications for women and families.)

The study is based on the AABC Uniform Data Set. What are the strengths and limitations of the UDS? 

CO: The UDS data were collected prospectively, which means women were enrolled in the study before the outcome of the pregnancy was known. This is an important strength because it means that the ultimate outcome could not bias the data that were collected during the pregnancy. Also, the UDS is used across dozens of birth centers, so it also enables us to get much more data than would be possible from a single birth center site.

A primary limitation is that the UDS does not capture information that describes the family’s experience of birth center care, which makes correlating the clinical findings with experiential information impossible. Also, the UDS isn’t used by physicians practicing in hospitals, so we could not compare our findings to typical hospital-based care.

AR: The first National Birth Center Study reported outcomes of births from 1985 to 1987. Even though this study took place two decades later, the results are strikingly similar. If we’ve known for decades that birth centers are safe and effective, and they provide high quality care without costly hospital overhead, why isn’t there one in every community?

CO: You’re right, the results were very similar. For example the c-section rate in birth centers remained stable, going from 4% in the first study to 6% in the current study, while the national c-section rate during the same period has increased dramatically from 18% to 33%. We’ve known all along that greater use of birth centers could curb or reverse this trend, but there are several obstacles that have prevented a broad expansion of the model. They fall into three categories: systems obstacles, business obstacles, and professional obstacles.

Systems obstacles:

• Hospitals have been predominant place of birth in the U.S. for so long that associated processes such as payment by commercial insurers and state Medicaid, the filing of birth certificates, and administration of state required newborn screening tests have all been developed based on hospital timelines and protocols. Therefore, changing the place of birth requires changes in all the associated systems as well, which can be difficult.

Business obstacles:

• The skill set that it takes to be a good care provider and the skill set that it takes to start and run an efficient business have very little overlap, and it’s the rare provider that has both.
• It takes a considerable capital investment to get a birth center up and running, and that’s not something most providers can access.
• Equitable reimbursement for provider fees to midwives and facility fees to birth centers from commercial insurers and state Medicaid plans has not been available in most areas of the U.S., so the return on investment has been low.

Professional obstacles: 

• Many physicians have opposed the independent practice of midwives while also refusing to enter in to collaborative practice agreements, which are required for midwives to provide intrapartum care in many states.
• Birth center regulations in many states require that a physician be the medical director of the center, and recruiting physicians to fill this role can be difficult.
• Hospitals have seen birth centers as competition and thus have not offered access to referral and transport.

AR: You are part of an effort to change things so that we do one day have a birth center in every community. Can you tell us about that effort, and why you think you will succeed?

CO: My co-founder Shannon Bedore and I formed Maternity Centers of America (MCA) in order to create a vehicle for addressing the barriers described above. As you pointed out, birth centers are a good thing and there should be more, so we built MCA to bring together professionals from a variety of backgrounds including business, real estate, construction, and health policy to look at the big picture of how maternity care works and find new ways to make birth centers a part of the healthcare system. If our efforts are successful, I believe that this broad range of perspectives will be the reason.

As our first step, we established a demonstration site in northwest Arkansas which will allow us to try new management strategies and find ways to leverage technology while staying true to the birth center model of care. From this flagship site, we hope to develop a replicable, scalable model for the development of birth centers around the U.S. This is not a new idea, nor one that only we are working to implement. Our colleagues at New Birth Company in Kansas City and at the Minnesota Birth Center in Minneapolis are also building replicable birth center models. Each of us has a slightly different approach, and all of us need to succeed in order to or build enough scale to have measureable impact on national outcomes.

AR: The American Association of Birth Centers and the American College of Nurse-Midwives are hosting a congressional briefing next month in Washington to share the study results. Why does this study matter to policy makers?

CO: This study is of particular interest to policy makers because of both its content and its timing. Maternity care makes up the largest proportion of the national hospital bill from a single condition, and a large proportion (45%) of that is paid by government programs. A recent report from the consumer advocacy organization Childbirth Connection entitled The Cost of Having a Baby in the United States highlights the striking cost of U.S. maternity care and its inverse relationship with clinical outcomes. The report showed that almost two-thirds (59-66% depending on payer and type of birth) of the total costs of maternity care went to cover facility fees charged by hospitals. Birth centers charge facility fees too, but they are a fraction of the typical hospital fee. In addition, c-sections cost commercial payers $19,000 more than vaginal births, and they cost Medicaid programs $9,500 more than vaginal births. Multiplied by the estimated number of excess cesareans in the United States, this means about $5 billion dollars could be saved each year by improving our ability to safely get babies born vaginally.

The low value of maternity care is coming into sharper focus for policy makers at the moment due to the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which adds maternity care to the list of essential health benefits and increases the number of pregnancies that will be covered by the government through the expansion of state Medicaid programs. As policymakers attempt to realign costs and outcomes, they are looking for strategies that address the “triple aim” of healthcare championed by Don Berwick and his colleagues: improving the experience of care, improving the health of populations, and reducing per capita costs of health care. Birth centers are a viable, evidenced-based option for meeting all three aims, which is rare, particularly in maternity care. 

Are you surprised by the results of this new study?  Will  you share this information with your clients and students?  Do you think this study will have an impact on the choices that women make about their birth location? Do you believe that more birth centers can help solve many of the problems facing birthing women and maternity care today? Share your thoughts in our comment section. I’d like to hear from you.- Sharon Muza, Community Manager.

Amy Romano Cesarean Birth, Evidence Based Medicine, Guest Posts, Healthcare Reform, Home Birth, Maternal Mortality, Maternal Quality Improvement, Maternity Care, Medical Interventions, New Research, Research, Uncategorized American Association of Birth Centers, Amy Romano, Birth Center, Cara Osborne, cesarean, guest post, Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health, Maternity Centers of America, National Birth Center Study II

by Wendy Gordon, LM, CPM, MPH, Midwives Alliance Division of Research

Today, midwife and researcher, Wendy Gordon, LM, CPM, MPH, Midwives Alliance Division of Research, takes a look at the recent article in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology that shared the authors’ view of the appropriate professional response from obstetricians when counseling and discussing home birth with patients.  Was this article based on good science?  Accurate and accepted studies? Did the authors selectively choose their sources and ignore other research that may have supported a different viewpoint?  Wendy shares information and research that invites consideration and discussion of the validity of the authors’ opinion. – Sharon Muza, Community Manager.

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Recently, an article in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology pled with obstetricians to not support planned home birth in any way, and even suggested that those who do “should be subject to peer review and justifiably incur professional liability and sanction from state medical boards” (1).  In their strongly worded opinion, the authors (the first two of whom are, curiously, members of the journal’s Advisory Board, and four of whom are also board members of the International Society of Fetus as a Patient) make their case that physicians should provide evidence-based information to women that planned home birth is not safe, that reports of patient satisfaction are overrated, that it’s actually not cost-effective, and that a pregnant woman has a moral duty to her fetus to give up her autonomy to her doctor’s judgment on this issue.  Let’s take a look at the basis for these recommendations.

Although there are many high-quality studies of home birth on which Chervenak et al. could have based their opinions, they led with the ACOG statement (2) that rests on the findings of the Wax et al. meta-analysis (3), which relied heavily on a study that included unplanned home births in its findings of neonatal mortality rates (4).  Many strong critiques of the Wax analysis have been published (5-11), including an unbiased look from someone who has no stake in the home birth debate.  The authors cited several more poor-quality studies, as well as 52 citations of commentaries, opinions and anecdotes (some even pulled from the popular media) to build their “evidence” basis. They conveniently ignored the large and growing body of literature that continues to show that planned home birth with qualified and experienced midwives holds no greater risk of perinatal mortality than birth in the hospital, and in fact results in far fewer interventions and lower risk of maternal and perinatal morbidity.

Here are some of the high-quality studies that Chervenak et al. did not cite in developing their opinion of the “professional responsibility response”:

• two systematic reviews (12-13) and a meta-analysis (14) of home and birth center safety studies that all show that there is no greater perinatal risk for planned, attended home births than for hospital births, and significantly fewer interventions;
• the only large-scale, high-quality study of Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) in the U.S. that described intrapartum and neonatal death rates as similar to other studies of low-risk home and hospital births (15);
•  other high-quality U.S. studies that show no difference in perinatal mortality between planned home and hospital births (16-18);
• several high-quality Canadian studies confirming no difference in the rates of perinatal death between planned home and hospital birth with much lower rates of both interventions and adverse outcomes (19-21);
•  a huge Dutch study of over half a million births that shows no difference in perinatal mortality rates or NICU admissions between planned home and hospital births (22);
• another Dutch study that shows no difference in perinatal mortality and lower risk of interventions and other adverse outcomes, particularly for multips (23);
• large, high-quality U.K. studies that show no difference in perinatal mortality rates and lower risk of both interventions and adverse outcomes (24-25); and
• a German study that shows no difference in rates of perinatal mortality and lower risk of interventions and adverse outcomes (26).

The authors then go on to discount the evidence of higher satisfaction among women choosing to deliver at home, as well as the cost-effectiveness of doing so, while presenting absolutely no evidence to the contrary.  The authors reference a study in the Netherlands where the transport rate from home to hospital is over twice that in the U.S. (and where Chervenak et al. took great liberties in interpreting the results on patient satisfaction) and a U.K. study where the costs of home and hospital birth are virtually equivalent.  While consistent, this approach to selectively reviewing the evidence and generalizing the findings to the U.S. maternity care system is disingenuous and deliberately misleading to American obstetricians and their patients.  A Washington State study of Medicaid patients planning a home birth with Licensed Midwives showed a savings of nearly $3 million, including the increased cost of those who transferred care and/or site of delivery (27).  This analysis did not attempt to account for the vast cost reductions of potentially avoided interventions, including cesareans and their complications, which would make the case for the cost-effectiveness of midwifery-led care in Washington State even stronger.  It is puzzling that Chervenak et al. did not cite this study, which is recent, took place in the U.S., was conducted by unbiased health-economics consultants, and directly addresses one of their four concerns.

The authors’ main argument against the proven cost-effectiveness of planned home birth is that “the lifetime costs of supporting the neurologically disabled children who will result from planned home birth” have not been factored in, nor have the supposedly increased rates of death.  If one accepts the conclusions of the enormous body of literature that finds no difference in perinatal mortality rates or other adverse outcomes between planned, midwife-attended home births and hospital births, then the pursuit of this line of reasoning is a non-starter.

The U.S. continues to lag behind many other high- and low-resource countries in accepting the evidence of the vast benefits of midwifery care.  The U.K.’s National Health Service has encouraged women to plan home births with midwives for several years; the Netherlands has always acknowledged midwives as the primary care provider in the childbearing year; New Zealand’s system similarly places midwives at the forefront of maternity and newborn care; Japan has a long tradition of midwifery-led care.  Most recently, British Columbia Health Minister MacDiarmid, accepting the evidence of safety, patient satisfaction and cost-effectiveness, has announced government support for women with low-risk pregnancies to plan a home birth, including support for physicians to become appropriately trained to attend home births (28).  But the medical associations of the U.S. continue to erect barriers to the type of interprofessional collaboration that has resulted in the excellent outcomes of these other countries.  The Chervenak et al. article is clearly intended to be yet another of those barriers.

In the centerpiece of the AJOG article, Chervenak cites himself an astounding 15 times in justifying why the rights of a pregnant woman to make autonomous decisions for herself and her baby should be relegated to her doctor’s judgment of what’s right for the “fetus as a patient,” grounded firmly, of course, in the aforementioned “evidence.”  In an astonishing disregard for shared decision-making and informed choice, Chervenak et al. state that “in a professional relationship, the physician’s integrity justifiably limits the woman’s rights by limiting the scope of clinically reasonable alternatives.”  The authors’ repeated and unusual use of the word “recrudescence” when referring to home birth, which reveals their perception of the choice as a disease or disorder, and their stubborn contempt for high-quality evidence if it disproves their opinion, exposes their intent and certainly calls into question their “integrity.”

“Professional responsibility” demands that we dare to examine the evidence that does not agree with our personal beliefs.  It requires that we allow the volumes of high-quality evidence to seep into our analysis of reality and into our presentation of true informed choice to our patients.  “Professional responsibility” demands that we examine and disclose our own personal, religious or anecdotal beliefs that may bias our interpretation and presentation of the research.  And it requires that we refuse to cloak those personal beliefs as “evidence” and “integrity” and by so doing avoid an abuse of power in relationship with our patients.

References

1. Chervenak F. A., McCullough L. B., Brent R. L., Levene M. I., & Arabin B. (2012) Planned home birth: the professional responsibility response. Am J Obstet Gynecol, Nov 13. doi:10.1016/j.ajog.2012.10.002. [Epub ahead of print].

2. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (2011). Committee Opinion no. 476. Committee on Obstetric Practice. Planned home birth. Obstet Gynecol, 117(2, part 1), 425-8.

3. Wax J. R., Lucas F. L., Lamont M., Pinette M. G., Cartin A., & Blackstone J. (2010).  Maternal and newborn outcomes in planned home birth vs. planned hospital births: a metaanalysis. Am J Obstet Gynecol, 203(3):243.e1–243.e8. doi:10.1016/j.ajog.2010.05.028

4. Pang J. W., Heffelfinger J. D., Huang G. J., Benedetti T. J., & Weiss N. S. (2002). Outcomes of planned home births in Washington state: 1989-1996. Obstet Gynecol, 100(2):253-9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0029-7844(02)02074-4

5. Carl M. A., Janssen P. A., Vedam S., Hutton E. K., & de Jonge A. (2011). Planned home vs hospital birth: A meta-analysis gone wrong. Medscape Ob/Gyn & Wom Health. Retrieved from http://www2.cfpc.ca/local/user/files/%7B1E683014-14EB-489F-99CE-B5A2185A6FC5%7D/Medscape%20%20Wax%20Critique%20-%20Michal,%20Janssen,%20Vedam,%20Hutton,%20de%20Jonge.pdf

6. Gyte G., Newburn M., & Macfarlane A. (2010). Critique of a meta-analysis by Wax and colleagues which has claimed that there is a three-times greater risk of neonatal death among babies without congenital anomalies planned to be born at home. National Childbirth Trust. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/34065092/Critique-of-a-metaanalysis-by-Wax

7. Keirse M. J. (2010). Home birth: Gone away, gone astray, and here to stay. Birth, 37(4):341-46.

8. Hayden E. C. (2011). Home birth study investigated. Nature [Epub]. doi:10.1038/news.2011.162.

9. American College of Nurse Midwives. (2010). ACNM expresses concerns regarding recent AJOG publication on home birth. [Epub]. Retrieved from http://www.midwife.org/documents/ACNMstatementonAJOG2010.pdf.

10. Romano A. (2010). Meta-analysis: the wrong tool (wielded improperly). Retrieved from http://www.scienceandsensibility.org/?p=1349.

11. Dekker R. & Lee K. S. (2012). The Wax home birth meta-analysis: an outsider’s critique. Retrieved from http://www.scienceandsensibility.org/?p=5628.

12. Olsen O. & Clausen J. A. (2012). Planned hospital birth versus planned home birth. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 9. Art. No.: CD000352. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD000352.pub2.

13. Leslie M. S. & Romano A. (2007). Appendix: Birth can safely take place at home and in birthing centers. J Perinat Educ, 16(Suppl 1):81S-88S. doi:10.1624/105812407X173236

14. Olsen O. (1997). Meta-analysis of the safety of home birth. Birth, 24(1):4-13; discussion 14-6.

15. Johnson K. C. & Daviss B-A. (2005). Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America. BMJ, 330:1416. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.330.7505.1416

16. Cawthon L. (1996). Planned home births: outcomes among Medicaid women in Washington State. Olympia,WA: Washington Department of Social and Health Services. Retrieved from http://www.dshs.wa.gov/pdf/ms/rda/research/7/93.pdf.

17. Murphy P. A. & Fullerton J. (1998). Outcomes of intended home births in nurse-midwifery practice: a prospective descriptive study. Obstet Gynecol, 92(3):461-70.

18. Anderson R. E. & Murphy P.A. (1995). Outcomes of 11,788 planned home births attended by certified nurse-midwives: A retrospective descriptive study. J Nurse Midwifery, 40(6):483-92.

19. Janssen P. A., Saxell L., Page L. A., Klein M. C., Liston R. M. & Lee S.K. (2009). Outcomes of planned home births with registered midwife versus planned hospital birth with midwife or physician. CMAJ, 181(6):377-83.

20. Hutton E. K., Reitsma A.H. & Kaufman K. (2009). Outcomes associated with planned home and planned hospital births in low-risk women attended by midwives in Ontario, Canada, 2003-2006: A retrospective cohort study. Birth, 36(3):180-89.

21. Janssen P. A., Lee S. K., Ryan E. M., Etches D. J., Farquharson D. F., Peacock D. & Klein M. C. (2002). Outcomes of planned home births versus planned hospital births after regulation of midwifery in British Columbia. CMAJ, 166(3):315-23.

22. de Jonge A., van der Goes B. Y., Ravelli A. C., Amelink-Verburg M. P., Mol B. W., Nijhuis J. G., Bennebroek Gravenhorst J. & Buitendijk S. E. (2009). Perinatal mortality and morbidity in a nationwide cohort of 529,688 low-risk planned home and hospital births. BJOG, 116(9):1177-84. DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-0528.2009.02175.x.

23. Wiegers T. A., Keirse M. J., van der Zee J. & Berghs G. A. (1996). Outcome of planned home and planned hospital births in low risk pregnancies: prospective study in midwifery practices in the Netherlands. BMJ, 313(7068):1309-13

24. Chamberlain G., Wraight A. & Crowley P. (eds.). (1997). Home births – The report of the 1994 confidential enquiry by the National Birthday Trust Fund. Cranforth, UK: Parthenon Publishing.

25. Northern Region Perinatal Mortality Survey Coordinating Group. (1996). Collaborative survey of perinatal loss in planned and unplanned home births. BMJ, 313(7068):1306-09. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.313.7068.1306.

26. Ackermann-Liebrich U., Voegeli T., Gunter-Witt K., Kunz I., Zullig M., Schindler C., Maurer M. & Zurich Study Team. (1996). Home versus hospital deliveries: follow up study of matched pairs for procedures and outcome. BMJ, 313(7068):1313-18. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.313.7068.1313.

27. Health Management Associates. (2007). Midwifery licensure and discipline program in Washington State: economic costs and benefits. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonmidwives.org/documents/Midwifery_Cost_Study_10-31-07.pdf.

28. Dedyna K. (2012, Nov 3). B.C. minister among first to support home births. Times Colonist. Retrieved from http://www.canada.com/minister+among+first+support+home+births/7494815/story.html.

 

Sharon Muza Evidence Based Medicine, Guest Posts, Home Birth, informed Consent, Maternal Mortality, Maternal Mortality Rate, Maternity Care, Medical Interventions, Midwifery, New Research, Research ACOG, ACOG and homebirth, Chervenak, Evidence Based Medicine, guest posts, Home Birth, homebirth, homebirth debate, midwives, Midwives Alliance, research, Wendy Gordon

Today’s post is the second one on disparities in maternal health care by regular Science & Sensibility contributor, Christine Morton, PhD, who is a medical sociologist and has researched and written about disparities in maternal health for many years.  Today, Christine takes a look at why women of color in the United States are facing a widening gap in maternal health outcomes and what some of the underlying factors might be.  This is part two of a two part series that looks at the research and examines what might need to change. – SM

Are public health and obstetric perspectives providing us with the best paradigms for understanding and eliminating racial-ethnic disparities in maternal health outcomes?   In my last post, I reviewed a typical public health study, which looked at maternal mortality by race, ethnicity and nativity, based on U.S. death certificate data from 50 states and two cities:  NYC and Washington, DC.¹

Documenting outcomes, while important, is only part of the answer to understand why racial-ethnic disparities exist, persist, and widen.  Even more, we can’t begin to eliminate disparities until we have a better understanding of how different groups of women experience the birth process.  By process, I mean the local context in which women experience pregnancy and give birth, the pattern of interventions and decision-making, the attitudes and behaviors of healthcare clinicians and childbearing women.  One of the best methodologies for examining local contexts of birth is ethnography, in the tradition of such classics as anthropologist Brigitte Jordan’s Birth in Four Cultures: A Cross-Cultural nvestigation of Childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden and the United States (1978) and sociologist Nancy Stoller Shaw’s Forced Labor: Maternity Care in the United States (1974.)   Only recently are social scientists turning their ethnographic lenses to current U.S. hospital childbirth settings, and I will highlight some of these projects in future posts.

Eugene Declercq, Mary Barger, and Judith Weiss² review the evidence for disparities among five major interventions in childbirth: induction, electronic fetal monitoring, epidurals, episiotomy, and cesarean section.   They use data from multiple sources, “reflecting the fragmented nature of data systems related to the birth process.”  The birth certificate in many states has an extended worksheet, but the quality and accuracy of many elements on the birth certificate is a serious issue.  The best way to look at administrative data on pregnancy and childbirth is to have a LINKED data set that matches Birth Certificate data with Hospital Discharge Data, thus allowing for risk stratification by age, parity, etc.

DATA SOURCES ON PREGNANCY and CHILDBIRTH

Data Source	Agency	What it provides	Used in this paper
Birth certificate	National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)	Overall national trends and disparities by race/ethnicity	Yes
Hospital discharge data (ICD-9/10 codes)	National Hospital Discharge Survey	Episiotomy use	Yes
Massachusetts natality data	MA Dept of Public Health	Includes method of payment	Yes
Listening to Mothers II Survey	Childbirth Connection	National retrospective survey of 1573 women who gave birth in 2005 (weighted for representativeness)	Yes
Pregnancy Risk Assessment and Monitoring System (PRAMS)	Centers for Disease Control and Prevention	Population based survey of postpartum women conducted annually in 39 states	No –only one question related to birth: “When was your baby born?”

Induction

Declercq and colleagues state that “rates of labor induction have more than doubled over the last 15 years in the United States,” and they review the geographic variability observed in this procedure – between states, within states, and among different types of hospitals.   The authors speculate that the rapid increase in induction rates, especially “elective inductions under 41 weeks gestation may have contributed to the shift in the gestational age distribution of births, with 39 weeks now being the most common gestational age.”

Rates of induction by race/ethnicity vary by data source.   National birth certificate data from 2005 show that “Regardless of parity, rates were highest among white non-Hispanic women, lowest among Hispanic women, with black non-Hispanic women falling in between.  First time mothers in each group have higher rates than multiparous mothers.”

Listening to Mothers II (LTMII) asks women whether they attempted to induce labor, whether their labor was medically induced and whether it was successful (i.e., no cesarean).  LTMII reported a higher overall rate of induction than the national birth certificate data (34% vs. 22%), in part because LTMII asks about a greater variety of methods, and because national birth certificate data only report those inductions that result in labor.  While techniques used to induce labor did not differ by race/ethnicity, LTMII found that Hispanic women who had given birth before had highest rates of attempted and successful induction (43% and 38%, respectively) compared to White women (39% and 33%) and Black women (29% and 22%) who had given birth before.  Regardless of parity, White women were more likely than Black or Hispanic women to try to self-induce (25% vs. 17% vs. 18%).

The authors also look at evidence for induction at 41+ vs. 42+ weeks gestation, but the data presented from LTMII and birth certificates does not include gestational age at induction.  This data element is on the birth certificate but is highly subject to error and missing values.

Cesarean Delivery

We know that cesarean rates have rapidly increased in the U.S. and that this rate has occurred among all racial/ethnic groups.  However, in this figure, Declercq and colleagues show that Black women had lower cesarean rates than White women until 1994, when they surpassed all groups, reaching 33.1% in 2006, compared to White women (31.3%), and Hispanic women (29.7%).  One reason for this is that Black women never experienced the decline in cesarean births the other groups did due to the rise in vaginal birth after prior cesarean (VBAC).

Black women have higher rates of cesarean at nearly every age group, and this is true among the three time periods examined (1991, 1996, 2005) and among every level of education.  Because the national data has limited variables to measure social status, Declercq and colleagues looked at Massachusetts data by payer.  Again, regardless of whether they had private or public insurance, Black women had higher rates of cesarean than White or Hispanic women.

Conclusion

Declercq and colleagues have made a valuable contribution to the public health literature by pointing out the gaps in public health surveys and summarizing what is known about its evidence base, current practice and associated health disparities. They conclude:

Three clear findings emerge:

(1) while there has been considerable research on each of these interventions, actual practice is not consistently related to its associated evidence base;

(2) randomized trials have not examined the relationship of these interventions and disparities in outcomes; and

(3) in all cases but fetal monitoring, which is virtually universally applied, there are differences in the application of the interventions to mothers from different race/ethnicity groups. However, there is also no clear pattern that would suggest that one group is more likely than any other to receive evidenced-base care.

Discussion

So back to the opening question – Are public health and obstetric perspectives providing us with the best paradigms for understanding and eliminating racial-ethnic disparities in maternal health outcomes?   In light of the variation among common childbirth procedures (interventions) like induction and cesarean, and with research showing that African American women are more likely to have cesareans,^3-5 yet are less likely that White women to agree that the “birth process should not be interfered with unless medically necessary,” how do we understand what is happening in clinics and labor units across the country?

Clinicians are beginning to realize that quantitative data is only the first step toward changing behaviors, and acknowledge that health care culture drives much of this practice variation.⁶ Yet most clinician researchers are untrained in the methods best suited to discovering how to maximize quality improvement efforts—ethnography and qualitative research. Donald M Berwick (Institute for Healthcare Improvement) has argued for a wider embrace of methodologies beyond the “gold standard” randomized control trial, to assist quality improvement efforts in health care. In particular, he informs his clinical colleagues that approaches such as “ethnography, anthropology, and other qualitative methods … are not compromises in learning how to improve; they are superior.”²

Clinicians, public health researchers (and maternity care advocates) have long relied on population data to make the case that evidence-based care can improve maternal and infant health outcomes. Yet every childbirth educator and doula knows the value of the story – which includes the mechanisms (how things work in practice) and context (local conditions, including actions and meaning, that influence the outcomes of interest).  Systematically combining good epidemiological data with compelling accounts of the childbirth experience by all participants is the next research frontier we must cross in our quest to improve the quality of care and outcomes for all women and their babies.

References

1. Creanga AA, Berg CJ, Syverson C, Seed K, Bruce FC, Callaghan WM. Race, ethnicity, and nativity differentials in pregnancy-related mortality in the United States: 1993-2006. Obstetrics and gynecology. Aug 2012;120(2 Pt 1):261-268.

2. Declercq E, Barger M, Weiss J. Contemporary Childbirth in the United States: Interventions and Disparities. In: Handler A, eds. Reducing Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Reproductive and Perinatal Outcomes: The Evidence from Population-Based Interventions: Springer Science+Business Media; 2011:401-427. Accessed online: http://www.springer.com/public+health/book/978-1-4419-1498-9

3. Braveman P, Egerter S, Edmonston F, Verdon M. Racial/ethnic differences in the likelihood of cesarean delivery, California. Am J Public Health. May 1995;85(5):625-630.

4. Getahun D, Strickland D, Lawrence JM, Fassett MJ, Koebnick C, Jacobsen SJ. Racial and ethnic disparities in the trends in primary cesarean delivery based on indications. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Oct 2009;201(4):422 e421-427.

5. Roth LM, Henley M. Unequal Motherhood: Racial-Ethnic and Socioeconomic Disparities in Cesarean Sections in the United States. Social Problems. 2012;59(2):207-227.

6. Main E, Morton C, Hopkins D, Giuliani G, Melsop K, Gould J. Cesarean Deliveries, Outcomes, and Opportunities for Change in California:  Toward a Public Agenda for Maternity Care Safety and Quality. Palo Alto, CA: California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative;2011.  Available online: http://www.cmqcc.org/white_paper

 

Christine Morton Childbirth Education, Guest Posts, Healthy Birth Practices, Maternal Mortality, Maternal Mortality Rate, Maternal Quality Improvement, Maternity Care, Pregnancy Complications, Transforming Maternity Care, Uncategorized Christine Morton PhD, Eugene Declercq, Listening to Mothers surveys, racial disparities in maternal mortality, racial disparities in maternity care, racial disparities in women's healthcare